Month: January 2002

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[2001] Yearly roundup

As it was an odd damn holiday, it was an odd damn year, too. However, I shall refrain from summing up anything other than this book log, since you can find dozens of such stories elsewhere. On the numbers front, a quick count shows seventy-six different things read listed in the index since the beginning of August; some of these are short stories or skimmed books, but other are multi-novel omnibuses, so take that as you will. (I take it as, “Geez, that is a lot.”) It turns out there are only ten books on both Chad’s book log and mine (eleven things, counting the Fellowship movie); I thought it would be more, probably because many of them are ones the other has read, just not within the relevant time frame. (However, my living quarters are much less cluttered than Chad’s, since I get a lot of things out of the library.)

A lot of my favorite authors haven’t been mentioned yet; I think the book log has been motivating me to re-read less, so people like Bujold and Brust, who put out books just before I started this, haven’t turned up yet. (It’s traditional for me to re-read Bujold during finals, when I’m particularly stressed, though, so just wait.) Overall, keeping this has been a good idea; it’s forced me out of my previous bad habit of finishing some books without really forming any impression of them, or thinking much about them. The time I spend on it varies, depending on how much I have to say about the book in question, but it’s not more burdensome than Usenet (well, perhaps a little more so, because I do tend to pay slightly more attention to my writing here). If any of my five readers have been contemplating keeping a book log of their own, I recommend it.

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Tolkien, J.R.R.: (01) The Fellowship of the Ring (re-watch of movie)

After the King has recently been re-released as a trade paperback, which is unsurprising because it’s an anthology of stories “in honor of J.R.R. Tolkien,” and everything Tolkien is being re-released because of the movie. I did manage to see Fellowship for the second time over vacation; I got even more out of this viewing, but not all of it good. I continued to appreciate the quality of the acting, the evident care that had gone into everything, and the references to the books (“A shortcut to what?” “Mushrooms!”); the second viewing allowed me to notice more of the details that underlie these virtues of the film (and see the scene that I’d missed when I ran to the bathroom the first time).

But while I still enjoyed it greatly, a few things bothered me more. One of them, Gandalf & Saruman’s confrontation, seemed basically a one-shot deal, and so may not affect the next installments. But, upon reflection, my dissatisfaction with Galadriel’s portrayal (which bothered me right away) extends to all of Lothlorien’s treatment. I think something subtle but important is lost by the movie’s change in tone—though I’m not sure how much this will affect whatever parts of the story that make it into the second and third movies. At any rate, I still loved the movie, am deeply impressed and relieved at the quality of the adaptation, and can’t wait to see the next one (and the one after that); but now that I’ve got a little objectivity back, it’s not quite as fabulous as I’d thought, is all.

(Oh, and I nearly forgot: did I really say that the Harry Potter movie turned Dumbledore into a Gandalf clone by sucking all the whimsy out of the role? Shame on me. Gandalf, as Ian McKellen’s brilliant performance reminded me, has more whimsy—and sense, and power, and strength—in his big toe than Dumbledore has in his whole body.)

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Greenberg, Martin (ed.): After the King

After finishing The Last Hero, I picked up After the King, edited by Martin Greenberg; it has a Pratchett short story, “Troll Bridge,” that also features Cohen the Barbarian, though it’s not clear to me if it’s supposed to be canonical Discworld. It’s a great story and works with some themes similar to The Last Hero‘s.

Since After the King has some other very fine stories, and since anthologies are good for short-attention-span environments like hospital and airport waiting rooms (to pick two examples completely not at random), I ended up reading most of the rest of it over vacation. (There are a few stories that I have no interest in reading, and accordingly have never read; I don’t really know why.) Far and away my favorite is Emma Bull’s “Silver or Gold,” a beautiful and wise fairy tale that’s possibly the best thing Bull’s published to date (high praise; she’s one of my favorite writers). My second favorite is Patricia McKillip’s “The Fellowship of the Dragon,” which makes me wonder if I’m not best off reading her in short story form; the only novel of hers I’ve liked so far is The Forgotten Beasts of Eld (which I loved), but I thought “The Lion and the Lark” was great (published in The Armless Maiden and The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, Ninth Edition). Other stories I particuarly enjoyed were Peter Beagle’s “The Naga,” Jane Yolen’s “Winter’s King,” and Mike Resnick’s “Revolt of the Sugar Plum Fairies.”

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Pratchett, Terry: (27) The Last Hero

What an odd damn holiday. It was the sort of thing the phrase “mixed bag” was invented to describe, or to put it another way, it was rather like the little girl: when it was good, it was very good, but when it was bad, it was awful. Which, for these purposes, boils down to: I didn’t have much time to read. (I also didn’t have net access, so this is going to be a long entry [ed.: split up for import into MT].)

I did read one of my Christmas presents, Terry Pratchett’s The Last Hero, beautifully and richly illustrated by Paul Kidby (not to be confused with Josh Kirby, the recently-deceased artist who did many of the UK Discworld covers). This is a much better story than the other recent Discworld book, The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents, though I don’t think it’s because this one actually is about the end of the world (again). This time, the end is nigh because Cohen the Barbarian and the Silver Horde (a handful of very old, and therefore very skilled, heroes, last seen conquering the Agatean Empire), have decided that it’s time to return fire to the gods—with interest.

A mix of familiar characters from Ankh-Morpork are drafted to stop him, leading to such conversations as this one:

‘What is that on your badge, Captain Carrot?’

‘Mission motto, sir,’ said Carrot cheerfully. ‘Morituri Nolumus Mori. Rincewind suggested it.’

‘I imagine he did,’ said Lord Vetinari, observing the wizard coldly. ‘And would you care to give us a colloquial translation, Mr Rincewind?’

‘Err . . . ‘ Rincewind hestitated, but there really was no escape. ‘Er . . . roughly speaking, it means, “We who are about to die don’t want to,” sir.’

There are moving bits among the silliness, and a nice clean plot, too. The book is fairly short—160 lavishly-illustrated, coffee-table-sized pages—but just the right length for the story. What’s more, the detailed illustrations add another layer, one that could not adquately be conveyed by text alone; just the picture of Death with the kitten (link to postcard page [*]) is priceless, but the painting of the swamp dragons and the excerpts from Leonard’s notebooks are great, too (“Clothing of the Empty Void: Mk 1.0 Rincewind. Converted pearl Diving Helmet with Simple Pressure Gauge (if eyeholes turn red, head has exploded).”). This is great stuff, though probably not for those new to Discworld. (Try Small Gods for that.)

[*] If you go to “Originals,” you can see a few more pictures from the book. I didn’t link straight to that page because it, like much of the rest of the site, has annoying and unnecessary Java applets. (And I won’t link to the site’s front page because the navigation options from that end are truly terrible.)

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